Human Rights
- Human Rights Index The Human Rights Index for the Arab Countries, sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme on Governance in the Arab Region (UNDP-POGAR), is a repository for the entire set of United Nations documents pertaining to human rights and the responses, including reservations, by the Arab member states to the committees that monitor the core international human rights treaties.
Law, Military, and National Security
- Digital National Security Archive This link opens in a new windowThis database includes 55 collections of the most important declassified documents regarding critical U.S. policy decisions.
- HeinOnline This link opens in a new windowFull text image-based searchable database of legal periodicals. Database coverage for each periodical is from the beginning issue to the most current allowed under contract.
- Military and Government Collection: Military and Government Collection identifies publications, research and content on military, security and governance issues worldwide from 1901 – present.
- International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Bulletin: The flagship publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Published since 1959, the IAEA Bulletin features issues influencing the IAEA and global nuclear developments.
Understanding International Legal Systems
- University of Richmond Constitution Finder - (now known as "Constitute") A great way to learn about a country's legal system is to look over its constitution. Search the constitution of any country in this handy tool from the University of Richmond.
- List of National Legal Systems - Wikipedia - This helpful listing from Wikipedia can give you an overview of the legal system of a country. This could be a jumping-off point to do more in-depth research on your country's system of laws and history.
- CIA World Factbook - Legal System - This U.S. Government resource has a brief overview of types of legal systems and descriptions, as well as a country by country listing of legal systems.
- Legal Systems Overview - Now that you've done some background searching about a specific country, you may need to make sense of some of the terminology. From Cornell University Law School's Legal Information Institute, this overview of legal systems can help to define some terms and concepts surrounding constitutions, laws, and legal systems around the world.
Humanitarian Organizations
- World Food Programme: The largest humanitarian agency fighting world hunger worldwide.
- World Security Network: An independent global action network for foreign and defense affairs.
- Human Rights Watch: An independent organization dedicated to protecting human rights.
- USAID: USAID provides foreign aid. The website provides information on its initiatives.
- UN.GIFT - United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking, the largest and most public hub of the UN to work towards combating human trafficking.
- Amnesty International - International, well-known human rights non-governmental organization with systems of tracking human trafficking and slavery, as well as assistance programs.
Primary Documents on Human Rights
Human Rights Treaties
ICERD (International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination) --Treaty Date: 21 Dec 1965
CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women)--Treaty Date: 18 Dec 1979
CRC (Convention on the Rights of the Child)--Treaty Date: 20 Nov 1989
Books from the CGS Virtual Library
On Human Rights by
What is a human right? How can we tell whether a proposed human right really is one? How do we establish the content of particular human rights, and how do we resolve conflicts between them? These are pressing questions for philosophers, political theorists, jurisprudents, internationallawyers, and activists. James Griffin offers answers in his compelling new investigation of the foundations of human rights.First, On Human Rights traces the idea of a natural right from its origin in the late Middle Ages, when the rights were seen as deriving from natural laws, through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the original theological background was progressively dropped and 'natural law' emptiedof most of its original meaning. By the end of the Enlightenment, the term 'human rights' (droits de l'homme) appeared, marking the purge of the theological background. But the Enlightenment, in putting nothing in its place, left us with an unsatisfactory, incomplete idea of a human right. Griffin shows how the language of human rights has become debased. There are scarcely any accepted criteria, either in the academic or the public sphere, for correct use of the term. He takes on the task of showing the way towards a determinate concept of human rights, based on their relation to thehuman status that we all share. He works from certain paradigm cases, such as freedom of expression and freedom of worship, to more disputed cases such as welfare rights - for instance the idea of a human right to health. His goal is a substantive account of human rights - an account with enoughcontent to tell us whether proposed rights really are rights. Griffin emphasizes the practical as well as theoretical urgency of this goal: as the United Nations recognized in 1948 with its Universal Declaration, the idea of human rights has considerable power to improve the lot of humanity aroundthe world.We cant do without the idea of human rights, and we need to get clear about it. It is our job now - the job of this book - to influence and develop the unsettled discourse of human rights so as to complete the incomplete idea.
ISBN: 9780199238781Publication Date: 2008-04-07
Human Rights in the Twentieth Century by
Has there always been an inalienable "right to have rights" as part of the human condition, as Hannah Arendt famously argued? The contributions to this volume examine how human rights came to define the bounds of universal morality in the course of the political crises and conflicts of the twentieth century. Although human rights are often viewed as a self-evident outcome of this history, the essays collected here make clear that human rights are a relatively recent invention that emerged in contingent and contradictory ways. Focusing on specific instances of their assertion or violation during the past century, this volume analyzes the place of human rights in various arenas of global politics, providing an alternative framework for understanding the political and legal dilemmas that these conflicts presented. In doing so, this volume captures the state of the art in a field that historians have only recently begun to explore.
ISBN: 9780521142571Publication Date: 2010-12-13
Capabilities, Power, and Institutions by
Development economics, political theory, and ethics long carried on their own scholarly dialogues and investigations with almost no interaction among them. Only in the mid-1990s did this situation begin to change, primarily as a result of the pioneering work of an economist, Amartya Sen, and a philosopher who doubled as a classicist and legal scholar, Martha Nussbaum. Sen's Development as Freedom (1999) and Nussbaum's Women and Human Development (2000) together signaled the emergence of a powerful new paradigm that is commonly known as the "capabilities approach" to development ethics. Key to this approach is the recognition that citizens must have basic "capabilities" provided most crucially through health care and education if they are to function effectively as agents of economic development. Capabilities can be measured in terms of skills and abilities, opportunities and control over resources, and even moral virtues like the virtue of care and concern for others. The essays in this collection extend, criticize, and reformulate the capabilities approach to better understand the importance of power, especially institutional power. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Sabina Alkire, David Barkin, Nigel Dower, Shelley Feldman, Des Gasper, Daniel Little, Asunci#65533;n Lera St. Clair, A. Allan Schmid, Paul B. Thompson, and Thanh-Dam Truong.
ISBN: 9780271036618Publication Date: 2010-04-05
World Poverty and Human Rights by
Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter, literacy, and basic health care. One third of all human deaths are from poverty-related causes: 18 million annually, including over 10 million children under five. However huge in human terms, the world poverty problem is tiny economically. Just 1 percent of the national incomes of the high-income countries would suffice to end severe poverty worldwide. Yet, these countries, unwilling to bear an opportunity cost of this magnitude, continue to impose a grievously unjust global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably perpetuates the catastrophe. Most citizens of affluent countries believe that we are doing nothing wrong. Thomas Pogge seeks to explain how this belief is sustained. He analyses how our moral and economic theorizing and our global economic order have adapted to make us appear disconnected from massive poverty abroad. Dispelling the illusion, he also offers a modest, widely sharable standard of global economic justice and makes detailed, realistic proposals toward fulfilling it. Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this classic book incorporates responses to critics and a new chapter introducing Pogge's current work on pharmaceutical patent reform.
ISBN: 0745641431Publication Date: 2008-03-10
Responsibility to Protect by
In 2005, the international community unanimously endorsed a revolutionary norm that has the potential to end genocide and other atrocity crimes in our time. Despite its endorsement at the highest political level and the general feeling of the American public that "something needs to be done" to prevent and stop atrocity crimes, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is very much absent from public thinking and the political agenda in the United States. Written by a stellar cast of authors, this book informs the public and leadership about R2P and its potential. It will also influence the academic, community and political debates by providing crucial insights on how to move R2P from rhetoric to action.
ISBN: 0230609023Publication Date: 2010-08-18
The UN Secretary-General and Moral Authority by
Once described by Trygve Lie as the "most impossible job on earth," the position of UN Secretary-General is as frustratingly constrained as it is prestigious. The Secretary-General's ability to influence global affairs often depends on how the international community regards his moral authority. In relation to such moral authority, past office-holders have drawn on their own ethics and religious backgrounds--as diverse as Lutheranism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Coptic Christianity--to guide the role that they played in addressing the UN's goals in the international arena, such as the maintenance of international peace and security and the promotion of human rights. In The UN Secretary-General and Moral Authority, contributors provide case studies of all seven former secretaries-general, establishing a much-needed comparative survey of each office-holder's personal religious and moral values. From Trygve Lie's forbearance during the UN's turbulent formative years to the Nobel committee's awarding Kofi Annan and the United Nations the prize for peace in 2001, the case studies all follow the same format, first detailing the environmental and experiential factors that forged these men's ethical frameworks, then analyzing how their "inner code" engaged with the duties of office and the global events particular to their terms. Balanced and unbiased in its approach, this study provides valuable insight into how religious and moral leadership functions in the realm of international relations, and how the promotion of ethical values works to diffuse international tensions and improve the quality of human life around the world.
ISBN: 1589011805Publication Date: 2007-10-29
Ethics, Authority, and War by
In original essays written by both senior scholars as well as rising younger scholars in the field of international ethics, this volume addresses the ethics of war in an era when non-state actors are playing an increasingly prominent role in armed conflict.
ISBN: 9780230101791
The Morality and Global Justice Reader by
This cutting-edge volume of original essays features a diverse, international team of prominent scholars examining issues of morality and justice within a global perspective. The chapters are grouped according to an integrative design that progresses from normative principles to normative theories to normative applications. Applications chapters address current significant and provocative topics such as poverty and the global economy; global health; religion; war; and gender, identity, and family. Distinguished philosopher and volume editor Michael Boylan provides a unifying introduction to each section. In addition, an abstract and list of key words provide readers with an informative entry into each reading. An engaging resource for all students of philosophy and politics, The Morality and Global Justice Reader not only offers an essential foundation of global justice and its policy implications, but also aims to inspire readers to positive action for change. A single-authored volume by Michael Boylan, Morality and Global Justice: Justifications and Applications, is also available as a complementary or a standalone text.
ISBN: 9780813344331Publication Date: 2011-03-01
Global Inequality Matters by
The globalization of trade, investment, and finance continues apace. Many have benefited from this, but deep inequalities persist. This book argues that the interconnections established by globalization make possible a critique of its inequality. For those who take seriously human dignity, equality is a basic presumption of social institutions.
ISBN: 9780230246904
Corporate Power and Globalization in US Foreign Policy by
More than a decade into the new millennium, the fusion of corporate and state power is the essential defining feature of US foreign policy. This edited volume critically examines the relationship between corporations and the US state in the development of foreign policies related to globalization. Drawing together a wide range of contributors, this work explores the role of corporations in using US foreign policies to advance the interests of transnational capital in a wide range of contexts, including: how US government policies have contributed to the globalization of production and finance the ways in which transnational corporations have influenced the US relationship with China, a crucial linkage in the new era of transnational accumulation how transnational corporate power has shaped capital-labour relations, humanitarian intervention, structural adjustment policies, low-intensity democracy and the G20 summits the "corporate centrism" of the Obama Administration, whose policies have been consistent with the growing power of transnational capital in US foreign policymaking the politics and consequences of the embedded relationship between various sectors of the transnational capitalist class, global institutions and the US state, including the limits and contradictions of this relationship during the ongoing capitalist crisis. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of both US foreign policy and international political economy.
ISBN: 9780203121610Publication Date: 2012-05-04
States, Nonstate Actors, and Global Governance by
This book addresses whether and how multilateral economic regimes can successfully transition from international institutions--cooperation among states--to global governance--cooperation among states and nonstate actors. The unprecedented era of peace and prosperity since World War II has been underpinned by multilateral economic regimes, yet in recent years the rise of nonstate actors has intensified international conflicts regarding fundamental questions of how to govern. This book asks whether and how multilateral regimes will be able to adapt. Based on an analysis of multilateral regimes for trade, investment, and poor-country debt, the author concludes that allmultilateral regimes--including those in the security, human rights, and environmental areas--face an increasingly existential challenge of reconciling the diverse 'polity preferences' of an ever-growing constituency of state and nonstate actors. This book's key contribution is a single model of state and nonstate actor preference formation, which offers the reader a new way to understand the dynamics of twenty-first century global governance. States, Nonstate Actors, and Global Governancewill be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, economics, international institutions, global governance and international political economy.
ISBN: 9780415655941Publication Date: 2012-12-18
Gender and Global Politics in the Asia-Pacific by
This book demonstrates the integral nature of gendered issues and feminist frameworks for a comprehensive understanding of contemporary IR bringing together the work of feminist scholars, teachers and activists into a coherent and accessible collection.
ISBN: 0230611605Publication Date: 2009-01-08
Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir by
Nyla Ali Khan, the granddaughter of the first Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, gives an insider's analysis on the political and social turmoil that has eroded the ethos and fabric of Kasmiri culture. She monitors the effects of nationalist, militant, and religious discourses and praxes on a gender-based hierarchy.
ISBN: 9780230107649Publication Date: 2010-11-17
Rights in Rebellion by
Rights in Rebellion examines the global discourse of human rights and its influence on the local culture, identity, and forms of resistance. Through a multi-sited ethnography of various groups in the indigenous communities of Chiapas, Mexico--from paramilitaries to a Zapatista community, an indigenous human rights organization, and the Zapatista Good Governance Councils--the book explores how different groups actively engage with the discourse of rights, adapting it to their own individual subjectivities and goals, and develop new forms of resistance to the neoliberal model and its particular configurations of power.Far from being a traditional community study, this book instead follows the discourse of human rights and indigenous rights through their various manifestations. The author offers a compelling argument for the importance of a critical engagement between the anthropologist and her "subjects," passionately making the case for activist research and demonstrating how such an engagement will fortify and enliven academic research.
ISBN: 9780804757331Publication Date: 2007-11-21
Non-Governmental Human Rights Organizations in International Relations by
Human rights play a crucial role in today's international relations. They provide standards to which states must conform when dealing with their own citizens. Non-governmental human rights organizations remind states of their obligations in that field. Without this, human rights would have drifted to the bottom of the international agenda.
ISBN: 9780230233706Publication Date: 2009-04-28
